News
Why Black Workers Will Hurt the Most if Congress Doesn’t Extend Jobless Benefits
by Emily Badger, Alicia Parlapiano and Quoctrung Bui
08.07.20 When Congress expanded unemployment insurance this year to meet the staggering economic toll of the pandemic, it had one less-noticed effect: It made America's fractured jobless benefits system more fair. Starting in April, the federal government provided $600 weekly payments to unemployed workers in addition to state jobless benefits, smoothing sharp differences between more and less generous states. It also broadly expanded who qualified, removing barriers for lower-wage, seasonal and gig wor… Continue Reading
Democratic Lawmakers Decry NLRB’s Reorganization Plan
by Robert Iafolla
08.06.20 The National Labor Relations Board's top lawyer plans to reorganize case handling in seven Western regional offices later this month, a move that would take authority away from more experienced leadership, according to senior Democratic lawmakers who are among those who oversee the agency. The reorganization will "undermine the NLRB's ability to fairly and effectively protect workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act," the lawmakers said in a statement announcing letters of protest… Continue Reading
Why we must expand the child tax credit
by Ritchie Torres, Benard P. Dreyer
07.31.20 Child poverty is a choice, not an inevitability, in the wealthiest nation in the world. The United States has the means to eradicate poverty among children. What has been lacking, for far too long, is the political will--what Dr. King famously called 'the fierce urgency of now.' The COVID-19 pandemic has created a time of fierce urgency for children, who are spiraling into ever-deepening poverty with no clear end in sight. A reform of the Child Tax Credit would lift millions of children ou… Continue Reading
The House Just Passed A Massive Child Care Rescue
by Emily Peck
07.29.20 The House on Wednesday passed a massive child care bailout in the form of two bills that would provide billions of dollars for an industry that has been long neglected. All the Democrats in the House, along with 18 Republicans, voted in favor of the Child Care Is Essential Act, which provides $50 billion in immediate funding to child care centers. (Libertarian Justin Amash and 162 Republicans voted against the bill.) These in-home and center-based programs look after infants and preschool chi… Continue Reading
DeVos aide played role in helping failing for-profit colleges, texts and emails show
by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel
07.28.20 For the past year, the Education Department has denied that a top official went out of her way to help Dream Center Education Holdings, owner of the Art Institutes, South University and Argosy University, as the company spiraled into insolvency. But a batch of text messages, emails and letters shed new light on Dream Center's relationship with Diane Auer Jones, the head of higher education policy at the department, and her efforts to help the company regain accreditation at two of its schools.… Continue Reading
Virginia adopts nation’s first coronavirus workplace safety rules after labor groups decry federal inaction
by Eli Rosenberg
07.15.20 The state of Virginia adopted the first set of coronavirus-related workplace safety mandates in the country, after a board approved the emergency regulation Wednesday - a move the state took after months of inaction from a federal agency tasked with nationwide enforcement. The state's safety and health codes board voted 9-2 to adopt what is called an "emergency temporary standard," which will require businesses to implement safety measures to protect people from being infected with the coro… Continue Reading
The federal agency that’s supposed to protect workers is toothless on Covid-19
by Nicole Narea
07.13.20 When Nevada's casino workers went back to work for the first time since March, many found that their employers weren't doing enough to protect them from the coronavirus. Casinos, including the MGM Grand and the Bellagio, didn't immediately inform employees if a new case was detected or shut down their work areas. And they didn't even require their guests to wear face masks for weeks after reopening, and until the state made it mandatory. "It's wrong that they didn't prepare for handling this,"… Continue Reading
House chairman asks CDC director to testify on reopening schools during pandemic
by Cristina Marcos
07.09.20 House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) on Thursday asked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield to testify before his panel later this month to discuss how schools can safely reopen this fall. Scott asked Redfield in a letter to testify before the panel's subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on July 23 so that lawmakers could "engage directly with you concerning the CDC's guidance to schools on how to s… Continue Reading
DeVos issues rule steering more virus aid to private schools
by Collin Binkley
06.25.20 The Trump administration on Thursday moved forward with a policy ordering public schools across the U.S. to share coronavirus relief funding with private schools at a higher rate than federal law typically requires. Under a new rule issued by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, school districts are ordered to set aside a portion of their aid for private schools using a formula based on the total number of private school students in the district. The policy has been contested by public school offi… Continue Reading
Education Dept. Rule Limits How Schools Can Spend Vital Aid Money
by Cory Turner
06.25.20 In a new rule announced Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos signaled she is standing firm on her intention to reroute millions of dollars in coronavirus aid money to K-12 private school students. The CARES Act rescue package included more than $13 billion to help public schools cover pandemic-related costs. The move comes nearly two months after the Education Department issued controversial guidance, suggesting that private schools should benefit from a representative share of the… Continue Reading
Whistleblower: Education Department Killed Website That Made Applying for Loan Forgiveness Too Easy
by Lauren Camera
06.23.20 THE TRUMP administration rejected a website that the Education Department's Federal Student Aid office designed to help students who have been defrauded by their colleges apply for loan forgiveness, arguing the tool made the process too easy, according to a whistleblower complaint. The development of the website was part of a $90 million federal contract to build one main hub for all federal student aid needs that modernized existing loan servicing portals and made them more user-friendly - i… Continue Reading
National Middle-income and rural families disproportionately grapple with child-care deserts, new analysis shows
by Amanda Becker
06.22.20 When Cathy Belair was searching for child care a couple of years ago for her two young granddaughters in Fletcher, N.C., the middle school math teacher said she found only two "quality" options that had space for the girls and also opened early enough for her to drop them off before work. So Belair, 56, and her husband, a 60-year-old school custodian, "dipped considerably" into their retirement savings to cobble together more than $1,500 a month for child care. After months on a waiting list,… Continue Reading
Why Is OSHA AWOL?
by The Editorial Board
06.21.20 As states and municipalities relax shelter-in-place orders, the nation seems to be racing to get the economy back to something resembling the pre-pandemic era. Restaurants, malls, cinemas, day care centers and retail stores are reopening sooner than most medical professionals think is wise. The risk is obvious to many businesses that stayed open as the coronavirus swept the country. Meat processing plants, for instance, have had among the highest rates of infection. Employees continued to show … Continue Reading
Schools Plan to Reopen as Federal Watchdog Finds Major Facility Problems
by Lauren Camera
06.04.20 WHEN THE PHILADELPHIA Federation of Teachers sent its 13,000 members a survey about their biggest concerns for reopening schools, it was inundated with a recurring theme: If school facilities aren't in better condition, I'm not coming back. "To use the sinks in the bathroom, one must hold the faucet on with one hand, making it impossible to thoroughly wash hands," one teacher replied, with others commenting that some faucets didn't work at all and that bathrooms almost always lacked soap. … Continue Reading
Trump Officials Defend Their Handling Of Worker Safety During Coronavirus
by Brian Mann
05.28.20 Trump administration officials defended their handling of worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic at a congressional hearing Thursday in Washington, D.C. But they acknowledged a grim new tally of deaths among doctors and nurses is "likely to be an underestimate," according to testimony from Dr. John Howard, head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This week the CDC raised dramatically its assessment of h… Continue Reading
DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools
by Erica Green
05.15.20 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions turned upside down by the pandemic shutdowns, about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billi… Continue Reading
OSHA has issued no Covid-19 citations
by Rebecca Rainey
05.14.20 Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal agency that polices workplace safety has initiated inspections into only about 7 percent of the Covid-19-related complaints that it's received - and issued citations in none. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, whose Cabinet department includes that agency - the Occupational Safety and Health Administration - says he stands ready to punish employers who don't protect workers sufficiently from the coronavirus. "We recognize," Scalia said May 1… Continue Reading
House Bill Backs SEP, COBRA, Cost-Free COVID Treatment
by Amy Lotven
05.13.20 House Democrats' $3 trillion coronavirus response bill unveiled Wednesday (May 12) would require HHS establish and promote an eight-week special enrollment period for healthcare.gov, would fully subsidize COBRA coverage, and would mandate that group and individual health plans provide COVID treatment cost-free to enrollees. It also would pump an additional $100 billion into the Health Care Provider Relief Fund created by the CARES Act and designate $75 billion for testing and contract tracing, … Continue Reading
K-12 school leaders warn of ‘disaster’ from huge coronavirus-related budget cuts as layoffs and furloughs begin
by Valerie Strauss
05.07.20 Just as they face unprecedented new challenges and financial costs, leaders of K-12 public school districts around the country are warning of dire consequences from sharp budget cuts from state legislatures attempting to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The alarm was sounded by school superintendents in 62 cities, who sent a letter to Congress through the nonprofit Council for the Great City Schools, asking Congress for billions of dollars in new federal education … Continue Reading
Trump orders meat plants to stay open in pandemic
by Taylor Telford, Kimberly Kindy, Jacob Bogage
04.28.20 President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday evening compelling meat processors to remain open to head off shortages in the nation's food supply chains, despite mounting reports of plant worker deaths due to covid-19. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to classify meat plants as essential infrastructure that must remain open. Under the order, the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to a person familiar with the action who sp… Continue Reading